<a>There was a meeting on the topic of Art versus Architect</a>

Another meeting in the series of VERSUS ARCHITEKT took place at the Czech Center Prague on Thursday, February 1st. The series is organized by the Czech Center, with archiweb.cz as the media partner, and is curated and initiated by the studio A1Architects, which has based the entire concept on a series of short presentations by various personalities centered around eight abstract themes. Of these meetings, four focus on the opinions of architect-creators and four on the insights of personalities who reflect, interpret, or create conditions for the practice of architecture.

With this fourth evening, the series has reached its halfway point. The meeting on the topic Art VERSUS ARCHITEKT was once again broadcast live online, and the recording will traditionally be published in the near future on the official series website www.versusarchitekt.cz. The evening featured a small change. After several guests exceeded their allotted time and a similar number of complaints from both the online and live audience, the organizers took an unpopular step. Although at previous meetings the current time was projected on the wall behind the audience to help the speakers, it often failed to maintain the limit. Therefore, at the meeting on art versus architecture, a thin line was displayed directly under the presentations, which disappeared completely after 21 minutes, and a small grim reaper began to blink, signaling that the time had already been exceeded and should allow space for the next guest to ensure a reasonable punctuation of opinions.

A total of six artists accepted the invitation, and the first of them - Jiří Příhoda (www.jiriprihoda.cz) - barely used half of the time. He pointed out the phenomenon of mutual misunderstanding between artists and architects.
When visual art does appear in architecture, it is often used in a strange or insufficient way. This only illustrates the difficulty of mutual understanding, as art is no longer merely about placing a visual object and requires attention and long-term interest.
He urged the present architects to collaborate with artists from the beginning of the work and not just when there is a wall left to decorate, and to take an active interest in contemporary art.

The time left hanging in the air by Jiří Příhoda was utilized by Petr Kvíčala (www.petr-kvicala.com). He recapped his experiences as he grapples with the relationship between art and architecture in his works. He identified two approaches he has witnessed. Either the completion of architecture with art or the method where the architect works directly as an artist – as a sculptor. He cited the Dancing House in Prague as an example, similar to Jiří Příhoda. He then outlined his personal credo as the search for the "name of the place" and presented a long series of his own magnificent realizations where he sought to fulfill it.

Because graffiti is inherently linked to architecture and the city of the 21st century, Jakub Matuška alias Masker (www.masker1.com) presented its development from the early beginnings in the 1990s to the present. He showed how its pioneers have asserted themselves in various ways today, and through numerous examples led the audience through the changes in styles and emphases to the current exhaustion, disintegration, and shift from personal contacts to online community.

Even Stanislav Zippe (www.zippe.cz) shared his experiences through his work. From his first won competition for a sculpture at the university campus in Suchdol to his shift from working with material to working with mere light. He reminded the audience that he is only interested in what his objects are right here and now. Perhaps the most significant example for architects was the execution of the light installation process at the headquarters of the Brno Public Transport Company from D.R.N.H and RAW, from design to realization.

Jiří David (www.jiri-david.cz) declined the offered break, claiming that everyone would then leave, and preferred to take the floor immediately. He introduced the audience to the fact that if he were in the audience, he would have already left. He immediately admitted that he has little experience with realizations in architecture, and that his presentation would be more of an attempt at mental architecture. He wants to show how art can undergo a journey without touching architecture while still considering architecture. He cited that intuition comes only to a prepared mind. His contribution was a surreal passage through photo documentation of his works, projects, and random inspirations, with occasional stops at the most important parts. He confessed that he read that the most important task of an architect is to find eccentricity, and he has never been able to find out what that word means.
He concluded his presentation with a photograph of women's breasts from below, with the words "no comment".

Next, architects will meet again at the Czech Center. The topic for the meeting on Thursday, March 1, 2007, is Your Own House versus Architect. Selected guests will share their experience of what it is like to design a house for the ideal and simultaneously the most demanding client - themselves. Does ideal architecture emerge from ideal conditions? And is the schizophrenic position of "architect for oneself" truly the ideal one? A meeting not only about the myths of the investor's role in architecture.